Thanks for ruining my day! That poor innocent boy was made a scapegoat by the evil George Bush. He just wanted to defend those humanitarians, the Taliban, so they could continue to do theIr good deeds. You would think that the father would have the decency to at least admit that his son did something wrong. Instead he blames Spahn's father for being vindictive. May he and his son rot in Hell!

Leftism is a mental disorder, marked by its rejection of reality in favor of comforting lies and self serving delusions. This mans editorial blaming the consequences of his adult sons choice to become a violent radical Islamic warrior on George Bush is case in point.

Young Lindh is a traitor, not a scapegoat. He should have been executed as a traitor.

Johnny Walker Lindh was no scapegoat. He was a committed traitorous jihadi. I am sorry he decided to leave Marin County to take up arms with the Taliban, but he did. He was captured with forces hostile to the United States.

He and his lawyer then took a 20 year sentance. They agreed to it and he plead to it.

So pound sand. And don't count on Obama Wan Canhopi to bail you out. He will throw your client under his reelection bus.

Read Doug Stanton's book about the beginning of the Afghan war and you will see that Lind did not just carry weapons for the Taliban. He was a total p.o.s. when he was captured and during the fighting when the prisoners tried to kill as many Americans as possible.

"Hello, my name is Frank Lindh and my son is John Lindh, a scapegoat, wrongly accused of terrorism and harshly treating by Bush and his minnions. John’s case was never about evidence. It was based purely on emotion. Rummy lied about what he had done"

"SHUT UP! You had us at "Hello".

Mr. Lindh, you ask the America people to find it in their hearts to let your son come home. Can't speak for all, but I just checked my heart. It said "no".

"John acknowledged only that he had aided the Taliban and carried weapons. "

What part of, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.", eludes him?

Is it any surprise that the son went astray when the father resorts to such outrageous calumny to excuse his behavior? How many times has that pattern been repeated in the past?

This is why the NY Times is such a POS paper. Senior makes no rational arguments and there is no news value in a father trying to expiate his own sins in raising his son by repeating the same pattern of denial and excuse making that caused the problem in the first place.

This article is every bit as sensationalistic and prurient as any sex scandal in the National Enquirer. It is pure leftist pornography.

Like Ernest Hemingway in the Spanish Civil War?! I don't remember Lindh being captured driving an ambulance.

What a fucking loser. He invokes all the MoveOn/Daily Kos bogeyman - Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Giuliani, spits on a father who lost his own son father fighting for his own country ('respect', my ass), and excuses all of junior Lindh's actions with the standard canard of 'misplaced idealism.'

San Andreas can't level the pesthole that is Marin County fast enough.

From a lawyering point of view, this would be malpractice if it were genuinely addressed to "the American people." No, the pitch here -- "Admit that you were not only wrong but irrationally vengeful!" -- is not made for the purpose of persuading anyone who ever thought Junior's conviction and sentence were justified. This is an attempt to get to the President while he may be in a football-spiking mood with an offer of a context in which football-spiking can be dolled up as justice-dispensing. And why wouldn't the NYT be proud to facilitate?

Yeah. And that worries me. There are, and were, a whole bunch of idealistic, spiritual and practicing Muslims down in Cuba with this nasty tendency to go back to what they were doing before they were captured when they got released.

It's obvious what Frank Lindh is trying to do, but "Free John" doesn't inspire the same elan as "Free Mumia," does it?

Tell Lindh Hemingway wasn't in the Republican Army, he was a screenwriter and journalist in Spain. He drove an ambulance in Italy during WWI for which he was decorated by the Italian government. Does Lindh think that Hemingway, despite all his faults, could possibly have taken up arms on behalf of the Taliban?

It does not seem to me that twenty years is such fearsome punishment for an act of treason. However, when you consider what Bill Ayers and his crowd got away with, Lindh has indeed been punished harshly.

We can forgive a man for defending his son. But we need not go mad and agree with him. We simply should pity the father and point him out to others who don't guide their sons to have a better moral center.

His parents had separated and his father, Frank Lindh, had declared himself gay, while his mother, Marilyn Walker wandered into New Age spiritualism. When their 16-year-old son converted to Islam and started roaming the suburban malls in kaftan and skullcap, they encouraged his "spiritual journey" even when it led a year later, in July 1998, to a pilgrimage to Yemen to learn Arabic and study in the religious schools of Sana'a. His mother looked Yemen up on the internet, and despite the country's reputation for kidnapping and religious extremism, allowed her quiet, brainy and eccentric child to leave.

"Some people are seekers, and he is one of them. I know that sounds New Age, and some people won't get it. But he wasn't doing this out of a void. He wanted this kind of life out of a pure motive," Marilyn Walker told People magazine.

John's father also agreed with the trip to Yemen. "We always accepted [his] interest in and conversion to Islam," Frank Lindh said, adding: "If you were going to study French, you'd go to France."

Umm .. simple answer - as the mother of a military recruit who began service in the Marines in 1998 - no. Join with the Taliban, be with the Taliban, rejoice at the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed a number of US military recruits of the same age that John whatever-his-name-was -- live with it. Serve the sentance. Grow old in captivity. Suck it up, hard-charger.

It does look like a case of youthful rebellion. Because he was rebelling against stereotypical Boomers though, he joined a violent, fundamentalist religious sect. Yet because they were stereotypical Boomers, they weren't bothered by it and instead thought he was a "seeker."

Got the fathers love part, with that said...yes his parents are also to blame because they allowed him to 'find his own way'. They probably never told him "don't touch that because it's hot" because they wanted him to figure it out for himself.

Having deployed to foreign lands and loosing friends, KIA and WIA, my sympathy for Walker ends at the last letter of double tap. It's fast, cheap, and involves little to no suffering (for you sensitive types).

John acknowledged only that he had aided the Taliban and carried weapons.

Huh.

Aiding enemies of the United States during time of war? What does that remind me of...?

Why, treason, that's what it reminds me of.

He was working with admitted and acknowledged enemies of the United States, and bearing arms in their service, and for this he should be let go because some other dude (even though admittedly an Important Other Dude) is dead?